A/N:
Hello everyone! This is D4_Ghostwriter here. Since the summary at the start doesn't really do this story justice, this is a story following the personal development of Little Mac as a central character. He's undoubtedly a poor fighter who struggles so often with losing yet has a tight group of friends that he would not give up for the world... and this is his tale.
I'm planning for this to be ~6-7 acts long, with about 10-40 chapters per act depending on length. There'll be updates on the weekly most weeks (at least until the end of 2020), so do check those out :) Leave a review, I'm super open to constructive criticism, and I love connecting with y'all.
That being said, I want to also warn that the story will take a fairly dark turn in the future. There will be sexual references somewhat frequently past ~chapter 10, because simply put it's part of Mac's character. There will be some swearing, as well.
But with that I want to say enjoy the story! I realised there's not a lot of the Smash content that I'd like to see on or on AO3 (ie: with sort of dark/mature backstories and an 'adventure' sort of feel to how the characters interact, rich worldbuilding, etc.) so that's why I wrote this. I really hope you enjoy this!
Much love, D4.
Act I: Climbing the Mountain
Volume 1: Rock Bottom
Losing is not as hard as being unable to fathom why you lost.
[ - Little Mac - ]
( - Battle! (Elite Four) / Battle! (Solgaleo/Lunaala) | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - )
I was down three stocks to one. Wolf looked tired but I felt downright exhausted.
I stood at the edge of the platform, panting.
The anthropomorphic wolf about ten metres from me swiftly approached.
Objects swam randomly in my sight. The crowd screamed their cold cheers and celebrations from all sides.
Even the ones on my end sounded neither familiar nor friendly, most of them sounding like "Finish him off!" or "C'mon, get us a three-stock!"
A bead of sweat trickled down my temple, and my chest pounded.
I heard it more than I felt it.
I clenched my jaw tightly. Now maybe four metres, the sound of Wolf's aggressive snarl barely reached my ears as the noise and volume of the fanfare muffled it down to a low growl.
He sped up, his image growing bigger by the second.
I stuck up my left arm, getting into a counterattack stance, preparing myself for his infamously long-ranged sliding, dashing kick the fanboys had nicknamed the Flying Foot.
I was going to punish him hard for underestimating me this late into the match.
Wolf began to slide; as I focussed on him, the colourful platforms all around us, his grin grew as he halted his momentum, well short of my position.
He feigned his kick to the right, and when I moved to knock him off balance and hit him with an uppercut, the wolf-man spun around with the grace of a dancer.
He grabbed my right forearm.
I shouted. The feeling of sweat against the animal's rough and coarse fur was uncomfortable, but more than that, intimidating for what he was going to do next.
Wolf's arm drew low and back, before swishing the air with a clean slash. A nasty snarl sounded. There was a cruel flash of red hot pain in my chest.
That was the last thing I saw for seconds.
I saw the three platforms, two on the base and the third at the crest, drop from beneath me, like I was floating, and then I was. I was floating, and then, there was the rush of beginning to descend, then fall, to the ground.
My heart twisted itself into a confused knot and ate itself in a quick panic. I was falling down… but I was facing up. The chaotic sky, normally so relaxing with all its glorious palette of colour, had turned into a nightmarish abomination of disconcerting paint like that of a fever dream. It bit and gnawed at my insides, the nervousness of not knowing when the next strike was going to land.
I needed to look down, to see what I was facing, what I was up against.
I heard the crowd scream 'Awooh!'
I flipped myself on my back barely in time to feel, to feel a numbing gash of electricity in my chest.
Faster than the strike, a hard, hard surface smacked my back, knocking all the wind out of my breath.
My eyes felt stuck together. I couldn't breathe for a second.
My back seized up erratically, but my arms, my arms were at least doing okay. I pushed off the ground, getting ready for Wolf's next move.
From across the stage, on the opposite platform, he sneered and fired the Blaster twice.
Too quickly.
I watched the white ball of light, surrounded by a distinct violet glow, hurtle towards me without a way of properly blocking it.
My feet rooted themselves in the ground, paralyzed in an anxious pain. In that moment right before it hit, I knew I was going down.
It was the sudden force I experienced that made me convulse violently. At least, that's what it could have felt like. All the muscles in my upper body spasmed at once.
The pain, it was, it was critical and controlling like a vice grip, like how a massive car of hardened steel and solid carbon is crushed, ripped and torn apart by a compactor.
It seared.
A drip of fluid trickled down my arm.
I couldn't tell whether it was blood or sweat.
Then, there were the red and green spots, the red and green spots that indiscriminately dotted my vision without respite. Their bounds weren't clear, and they merged in and out of each other often, and I could barely, barely make out the figure of my adversary, that damn Wolf, but then the next purple slash flashed.
Violent violet claws appeared near my face as I dazedly looked on, and then they were slashing my abdomen, chest, and gut.
Rapid. Numbingly painful. Injuries so cold that they feel hot. Dashes and commas of blood punctuated each strike.
I must've yelled. The vicious assault finished with a strike in the solar plexus.
The sudden energy torched.
My liver, it swelled, and I wanted to cry. All the wind was knocked out of me. Muscles that were compacted stayed there.
I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe, but then I could, and I was falling. Away and up.
The platform was getting farther and farther away, and the crowd grew louder as I was approaching them; they were screaming my eardrums out.
Time was slowing down.
The platform was there and rising by the second. My brain baulked but my face made no reaction.
I felt my body jump as I commanded it to; the platform dipped in comparison but was still at least five metres away if not more horizontally. Hope drained from me like blood. It would be impossible to reach, even with the Jolt Haymaker.
It was well and truly over.
We were, for a brief second, eye-to-eye again. The tiny maroon pupils of his eyes emanated sheer, true, pure power, distilled and refined to express dominance.
Wolf's smirking mug stared right back at me. He extracted his own war machine, once more, from his pocket, aimed it and promptly fired it at me.
He and I both knew I wasn't making it back regardless, though the raging crowd was all but privy to it. They had no idea. They were, without a doubt, oblivious to it.
It had been a massacre.
The cruel mauve blast connected with my face. An ancient pain controlled my skull, like a vicious, chronic migraine. I felt a bone break in my face. Fluid gushed into my sight. Out of my second eye, whichever it was, I couldn't see anything but Wolf gazing down at me and the structural spikes of Final Destination. An unforgivable arrogance poisoned his face.
I was spinning uncontrollably. I looked down. The feeling in my stomach was tumultuous and tough, dark and dreading.
I stared down at the fuzzy night of the blast zone, and let go.
I gave up.
The blast zone took me in a brilliant beam of light.
( - Twinleaf Town Daytime | Pokémon Diamond and Pearl - )
The accelerated healing kicking in helped me physically heal, but alas, that wasn't the only thing that was hurt.
I clenched my jaw hard. A shockwave of pain rippled through my temple like I imagined a monstrous, ten metre tall Japanese tsunami would rip through one of its coastal cities. I grimaced and my hand drifted to the side of my head, subconsciously. The fiber of the bandage felt fine to the touch, and I had no intention to prod any deeper than that. It was far too sensitive still, especially that close to my eye. Dr. Mario had said I had broken my orbital bone and would be out of commission for at least another day.
I looked around the hospital room I was in. Well-lit, air-conditioned, and with exemplary medical facilities. Every fighter, no matter how strong and resilient, depended on these after each battle. The bed under my back was firm yet soft to the touch. What even was that battle? I don't reckon I landed more than four or five hits the entire match… I gazed absently at the glowing purple crate lying in the corner, one of the eight of them in the room. Four were at the base of the bed, the other four attached to the ceiling, forming one of the infamous and mysterious 'healing cuboids' that the hospital was known for amongst the community. He wasn't even that fast, or that strong. I must've made a few mistakes, but that wouldn't have caused a… three-stock, would it have? I channeled my gaze. My one good eye stared intensely at the ground. I tried to find a reason, pull it out of my ass, to explain to myself, why, why I had lost so poorly in a matchup that wasn't, shouldn't have been a complete massacre, but I blanked for seconds.
Nothing.
The numbers, the goddamn numbers rolled in my head.
Over the course of the last three matches, I had only won six points total. A stock was worth three points; winning the match would earn you another two bonus points, while three-stocking an opponent would earn you an additional two and a half bonus points.
So far, the average was twenty and a half points.
The statistics kept coming to me as I scrolled through my phone, the halved vision not helping at all. 106th out of 128.
In other words, in the bottom twenty percent.
Not even below average, this was way past that. Far too gone. I wasn't even pitted against any of the big names expected to get high placings in the last fights, outside of perhaps Wolf. Doesn't help that the guy hadn't been here for the last, what, seven years? The crowd was really going nuts for his return.
Why does that matter, though? They're never going to cheer for me. I'm going to need to pick this up irrespective of who those idiots are cheering for, and show them that they're wrong. I was going to have to, or I would be out of the Ultimate tour. The cut-off was the eighty-fifth spot - the top two-thirds of the competitors; a whole twenty places above where I was now. The cracked phone at my bedside buzzed gently with notifications of the fights that had occurred today; bright white light shone up on my face in the dusky gloom. eighty-fifth… Incineroar, with thirteen points. Say his next matches go similarly - he'd be at twenty points at the final round. I'd likely have to make at least fourteen, if not more, points in my next few matches to make it.
I groaned inwardly, my throat aching on one side, adding to the feeling of imbalance in my body. Closing my eyes, and turning my vision to black, I recalled the first fight, the only match so far that hadn't been absolute dogpoo.
It had been against Pit. "Good luck, Mac. You're gonna need it." I had smirked at him, as he did for me; we'd been fairly close friends since being low ranked during the last tour. Good times, in a way. We were going to give it our best effort regardless - we'd promised each other that much beforehand.
Pit had a fairly offensive playstyle; but, he simply didn't have the speed to commit to rushing me down, I knew that much, so although I myself wouldn't be taking that much damage, I had to be careful to not go for anything risky that he might block and punish. I approached as he grabbed his bow, nocking a bluish-white arrow to it. As I neared him, his right eye closed, his left in a tight squint, and he fired it.
Jumping over it was my first mistake.
As I jumped, he matched, and with a grunt and surprising range slashed at my arm, twirling the bow-sword, as it spun with relative ease. Some hits landed square in my chest, others along my forearm, the pain making me cringe. His assault continued, and as I tried to raise my arms to block, it only got worse; his jumps were getting shorter and shorter to the ground, so he could easily time each overhead strike.
"Hyah!"
Every single god-damn time, Pit yelled that.
I could still hear it as I closed my eyes, and I could still feel that red hot boiling burn of frustration of getting hit so many times in a row and feeling helpless between each one, even if and in a way, especially because the person on the other end was my well-intentioned friend.
I'd barely dodged one of the strikes as I flew farther and farther away with each successive aerial hit. Pit kept going one move too long. I'd grabbed his arm and flung him backwards.
"A-ha!" His screams had been pretty comical.
I couldn't let it distract me, however, because this was an opening I had been wanting to punish. I wound up for an upward-angled punch in his gut, enough to launch him a considerable distance. "The Jolt Haymaker, Mac!" I smiled wistfully, remembering the moment in the middle of the fight with the crowd all around us that I recalled Doc Louis' words, coaching me to use my signature special strike. Connecting Pit's chest with my fist, lit in blue fire, was the most satisfying thing in that match.
I ended up taking the stock with that side-special move, but after that the battle was memorable for the wrong reasons. He edge-guarded me twice successfully, evoking cries from the crowd. He apologised after each one, and even though I told him there was no need to, inside, I was angry. Furious. My skin heated up just at the thought. I forced a grim smile.
"You ain't no air fighter, Mac." With a smile, I shook my head again, pain shooting up my neck muscles.
"Urgh."
"Hey man, how are ya?" A winged angel strode into the room. Speak of the devil. Heh.
Even though I'd seen him a couple times in the Ultimate tour recently already, it didn't cease to amaze me how tall he'd gotten in the last three or so years. Now, Pit was about five foot nine and, well, looked sixteen, what with the passing of time in different universes and how angels may or may not age. He had handsome, proportional features, and had grown slightly out of his child's body in Tournament 4.
But, in spite of growing up physically, he didn't lose his perpetual childlike optimism and happiness; along with his overconfident and boundary-crossing social interactions with others, his low-tier status and his unbridled joyfulness made him more or less unpopular amongst the crowd in Tournament 4. Bluntly put, Pit also wasn't… really the brightest.
Nevertheless, it was energizing to be around him; plus, it always helped getting the perspective of a fighter who specialised in aerial attacks if you yourself weren't an expert in the area. His infectious personality rubbed off wrong on a lot of others, but personally, it helped me enjoy battles more, especially when I lost. That was often.
Very often.
I had a strong feeling that that wouldn't be changing anytime soon.
"Pit, I'm pretty banged up." Pit turned the corner. I didn't need a mirror to know that he'd just seen my condition. I wasn't in an amazing state.
"Uh, what... what even happened, there, dude?" I told him all about losing the Round Three match against Wolf, his lethal Blaster, the final edgeguard and forfeiting yet another win.
"Even though we've got the accelerated healing and stuff going on, it's hurt a nerve near my eye, bro. I'm gonna be out of here pretty soon, but that's probably why you haven't heard from me in so long." Pit made a weird face, as if to say Yeesh.
"Hrm, that seems bad." You don't say. "Well, what're ya on right now? Surely you got at least one stock on the guy, right?"
His pronunciation slowed towards the end of the sentence, and as he realised I didn't respond, he put the pieces together. I could hear the gears churning, and his smile dropped from his face.
"Ah. Sorry dude." This guy…
"Pit, it's no problem; it was my fault that I'd screwed up the battle so badly."
That sentence was braver and more confident than I personally felt.
"Yeah… well, ya probably didn't know this, dude, but the others did come to visit ya yesterday when ya came in, but ya didn't wake up."
"Shit, how long's- how long has it been, Pit?" His comical expression of being supposedly 'deep in thought' never ceased to amuse me.
"Think your fight was Wednesday, and today is Saturday." Crap. That gives me less than a week to prepare for Round Four…
"Anyways, I'm sure me and-" he gulped, "Lady Palutena-" I smirked, hoping he wouldn't see it from inside my literally mummified face, "-can help take a look at some of your replayed runs and check out what you're doing wrong." Once I get out of this place…
"Mmh - well, 'nuff about me. How'd your battle go, Pit?" His embarrassment from a second ago quickly morphed into a bright grin that shone, and touched me just a little. He nodded confidently.
"I didn't win, but I managed to get two stocks off that weird, mysterious guy. The one in the black cloak that wears that white, uh, mask-thingy. What's-is-name? ...Ren, or somethin'?" I looked at him.
"Pretty sure he goes by 'Joker'."
Pit waved his hand. "Pshah; anyway, I think I'm on, uh... seventeen points? I dunno, dude, I'm not the best at math."
I agreed with him. "Hey, regardless, that's solid, bro. You ought to be proud of yourself. You're gonna make sure they'll forget everything about your D-tier status this tour at this rate."
At that, he grinned broadly. "Actually, uh… ya reckon I'm safe?"
"Yeah." I nodded.
In all honesty, it was a slightly begrudging nod. I was happy for Pit, that he was safe and all, but it was a bitter sort of happiness. If he could score any decent hits in the next two rounds, he would be in. I was far from that. For me, in the following fights, I was gonna have to pull something crazy out of my ass to even barely make it into Ultimate.
I didn't think that was going to happen.
Eighty-fifth right now had more than double the number of points I had, and that lead was likely bound to grow. I buried my head in my hands. The math didn't matter - I was just going to have to win both battles, I knew that much just by the feel, and the shape of the numbers.
"...Mac?" I had zoned out.
"Ya good, dude?"
I turned to a confused, and concerned-looking Pit.
"Yeah." No.
"The gang, we're heading to Centiskorch's Café tomorrow night at seven-thirty, ya feel like joining us?"
"...Mmh. Sure."
"It'll be good to see the rest of the crew again."